A Firm Place to Stand
by Min Daae
Summary: Dean comes back from a hunt to find a familiar stranger in his room. Set pre-series, extraordinarily vague non-spoilers for later series.


_Author's Note: So one of my favorite tropes in fic is this thing that happens sometimes, where timelines cross. Like "Time Will Not Find the Lost" by **honeylocusttree** and "Wayward Son" by **pixymisa**, or "We Mortals Be" by **debbiel66**. It's a thing I really like. And this was a thing I actually prompted at a livejournal meme a while ago. Which makes this wish fulfillment fic at its finest, let's be honest.  
_

* * *

Dad took off halfway through the week, effectively dropping their in-progress witch hunt in Dean's lap. Which was fine, it wasn't like he couldn't deal with it, but-

It was a pain in the ass.

The witch wasn't so bad, at the end of it, at least. Pretty new to the gig and between wrecking her altar and some rather (if he said so himself) inventive threats, she was swearing off of so much as wandering into the occult section of the public library. So that was good.

Except then he trekked back to the motel room and opened the door and felt a little like the freaking bear from Goldilocks, except they weren't sleeping on his bed, just sprawled on the floor and. Bleeding. Something seemed oddly familiar about them, but Dean was a little busy reaching for his gun to register it.

"Hey," he said, low and dark and dangerous and maybe imitating his father a little. "What the fuck do you think you're doing?"

The stranger didn't stir. Didn't even flinch, and Dean realized that they seemed to be passed out and there really was a fair amount of blood. _Better and better, _Dean thought, and edged closer, keeping his gun out and safety off as he edged closer and extended a hand to check for a pulse (why their room, why did it have to be their room).

His fingers brushed slightly too warm skin and the stranger jerked, head lifting sharply and blinking at Dean with dazed hazel eyes. "…Dean?" He said, blankly, and Dean realized why this supposed stranger looked so familiar.

Although he was a far cry now from when he'd last seen him. A far, far – surely two years didn't change a person that much. Right?

"Sam?" Dean said, almost in disbelief, but he knew that voice and those eyes and even the stupid hair, different but same color, same slight wave. But Sam was –

At Stanford. _Safe. _Of which he appeared, currently, to be neither.

Sam, however, looked massively relieved. (Okay, unsurprising, how long had he _been _here, couldn't he fucking _call_.) "Dean," he said, "You found me," and passed out again.

~.~

Dean knew knife wounds when he saw them. What he wanted to know was how the fuck Sam (honor student at Stanford, so yeah, he'd checked) had ended up with one. And a nasty one, Jesus. Long and deep and bloody from hipbone to ribs like someone had tried to gut him and just barely missed, and his first impression hadn't been wrong. It'd bled a _lot, _and that with Sam's pallor and the rapid flutter of his pulse had Dean pretty seriously concerned even as he worked on stitching his little brother back together before he woke up. After heaving him up onto the bed, and that had been a challenge, what was Sam made out of now, bricks?

Hospitals were always a last resort, but at least Sam probably had a real name and legal insurance at this point. They were bound to ask about a knife wound, though, and that would probably mean police and all kinds of complications.

Right on cue, Sam twitched and made a soft noise in his throat. Dean paused in his methodical stitching, wincing slightly. Sam had never been good at stitches. He was going to freak out, and Dean didn't have enough limbs (or weight, because what were they _feeding _him at Stanford, huh?) to hold him down.

Sam surprised him, though, by opening his eyes and blinking groggily, tensing just slightly. His expression was tight, but it was like he was…used to this. (Okay. Okay, seriously. Had Sam wandered into some kind of cult? Gang? _Tribal warfare?_ Because this was not the Sam he'd surreptitiously tailed to the bus station two years ago. _Far _from it.

"Okay," Dean said quickly, because Sam looked like he was going to ask questions and letting him get started on that was never a good idea, "Can I just ask what the _fuck _happened? Who _knifed _you?"

"Um," said Sam, and looked…not embarrassed. Uncomfortable. His eyes slid away from Dean's, and that, right there, that was not new. That was always how Sam looked when he thought Dean was going to get mad, and seriously, what the fuck. "I'm sorry," Sam said, in a quieter voice. "I know…"

All of Dean's nerves were jangling, and jangling hard, like fucking klaxons going of in his head of something very, very wrong here, and two years wasn't that long, it really wasn't. "Sam," Dean said sharply, in his _come on, dude, focus _voice, and Sam-

Sam flinched.

"Jesus Christ," Dean swore, "What did they do to you at that school?" And Sam suddenly looked…confused. _Really _confused. Narrowed his eyes, almost squinting, and then his head fell back and he made a soft chuffing noise, like tired, reluctant laughter.

"Oh," he said, "Oh, great," like he'd just worked something out.

"You want to actually answer some questions?" Dean snapped, and Sam's eyes closed.

"Can you finish the stitches?" he said, quietly.

"We're out of," Dean started to say, pressing his lips together, and Sam interrupted with, "I can hold still."

Sam never could hold still. For anything. Haircuts or stitches or anything. Dean arched an eyebrow at his younger brother and went back to stitching, though, because while the bleeding had slowed it was still pretty nasty. And what did you know, Sam held still. Perfectly still. _Eerily _still.

Something was very wrong here. Maybe it was time to get out the silver knife.

"Is – is Dad here?" Sam asked, as Dean snipped the last stitch and set the needle aside, only his voice betraying any pain. There was something strange there, too. Like longing. Dean gave Sam a look that he hoped communicated how _weird _this was and how _soon _he expected explanations.

"No," Dean said. "Fucked off, left me in the middle of a hunt." Sam's shoulders slumped, and just as Dean was about to offer to call, or something, because if Sam wanted to apologize-

Well, who was he to get in the way of familial reconciliation, no matter how unlikely?

Sam interrupted, though, said, "Probably for the best," and closed his eyes, lying very still again. Pale as he was, Dean almost put his fingers on Sam's neck just to make sure there was still a pulse there.

"Okay," Dean said. "Stitches done. I want an explanation."

Sam took a slow breath, and then let it out quickly, wincing. "I can't," he said, after a moment of silence, and Dean stiffened.

"Sam," he said in a warning tone, and Sam fidgeted minutely and opened his eyes and looked at Dean and Dean felt the bottom drop out of his stomach, probably fucking literally, because Sam looked-

-like everything that gave his life meaning had been taken away, not that Dean had any kind of reference for that, thanks Dad-circa-November-2nd. And fuck. Oh fuck. Something had gone badly, badly wrong and Dean hadn't been there and this wasn't just a knife wound, this was- "Sammy," he said, this time urgently, "Come on, you can't just-"

"I don't even know how I got here," Sam said, almost under his breath. "I don't know how long I have-"

"Are you,_" _Dean said, and choked on the last word, because that sounded like some kind of – but Sam made a choking sound that was probably supposed to be a laugh though it didn't sound like much of one.

"No – no, I'm not. Not even a little." There was something about his tone, there, something dark and bitter that said _something _but Dean couldn't work out what it was, and that was wrong too, he was supposed to know everything Sam said, he always had, always had understood all the little things that Sam didn't say out loud. That was how they'd _been. _He couldn't have lost it all in two years. Could he?

"Who knifed you?" Dean asked, again, because it seemed like a simple question, at least. Sam glanced at him.

"Doesn't matter."

"What-"

"They had a good reason for it," Sam said, and he sounded so level and calm and fucking reasonable, like he wasn't talking about someone trying to put his insides on the outside, _ain't no thing, happens sometimes. _Dean thought he could see red.

"There is _no good reason _for anyone to be sticking a knife in you."

Sam's expression did that thing again, where it _hurt _to look at, just for a second, because he looked so goddamn hopeful and wistful and yearning all at once, and then it was gone, and Dean didn't know why it'd been there in the first place, Sam knew how it was with them. "Don't worry about it, Dean. It's not…it's not your problem."

"Damn right it's my problem! Someone hurts you, that makes it my problem, Sam! Jesus-" Sam's eyelids fluttered and for a moment he looked like he was going to fade out again, so Dean cut off. "Easy," he said, "Easy. Let me get you a glass of water, okay?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "Okay."

Dean filled up a glass of water in the bathroom and brought it back, aware that he was hovering and, yeah, not particularly caring right now. Sam was the one who'd turned up in the room bleeding all over the fucking place, he could just _try _to complain. (He didn't, though, which was almost weird. Gulped the water down as Dean helped him sit up just a little and then relaxed back into Dean's hand on the back of his neck like he'd never felt something so good.)

Klaxons. All over again. (What had they done to his Sammy, seriously, someone was going to pay for this.)

"How'd you know where to find me?" Dean asked. "You haven't called in two years."

"Was it really…" Sam stopped. Restarted. "Has it been that long?" His voice sounded weird. Cracked and kind of strange.

"Yeah," Dean said, and considered admitting that he'd gone down to visit, but decided against it. "And now you're in trouble. Figures." He expected Sam to get pissed at that one, wanted him to, really, because Sam wasn't acting like _Sam _and it was…weird, okay?

Sam just kind of snorted, though. "Yeah," Sam said. "Figures." His eyes drifted toward closed again. "Miss you," he said, abruptly. "Dean. –I mean, I did. I do. Miss you."

"Sam," said Dean, giving up on subtle, on guessing, on beating around the bush. "Tell me what the fuck is going on."

Sam hesitated. "If I did," he said, after a moment, in a small voice. "It'd probably only make things worse."

"Make things worse than what?"

"Than they're already going to be," Sam said, sort of fuzzily, and Dean felt a jarring sense of something trying to settle into place that didn't fit, that he didn't like, that didn't…he didn't even know why he thought of it. Probably because their lives were just that weird, just that fucked up, and two years, it hadn't been long enough, not for this.

"Sam," he said, abruptly. "What year is it?"

"Two-thousand nine," Sam said, and one corner of his mouth quirked into a bleak little smile before his eyes closed the rest of the way.

Out again, leaving Dean staring at him blankly. Blankly. At his brother, seven years in the future. "What happened," Dean asked, pointlessly, and wanted more to know _and where the hell was I. _

_~.~  
_

Dean let Sam rest. Checked his pulse every couple minutes. Went out to the vending machine and got a bottle of Gatorade. Noted with dismay that the carpet was actually squelching a little where Sam had bled into it, though it was starting to dry. He ended up sitting in one of the chairs at the motel table and watching Sam, trying to sort everything out in his head.

Which made the first question he asked when Sam jerked awake probably a half an hour later, "Sam, am I…dead?"

Sam froze, and shook his head, violently. Dean slumped, relieved. "No," Sam said, hurriedly. "No, you're not – you mean – no. Yeah." He made one of those weird, semi-laugh noises again. "No. You're not dead."

"Okay," Dean said, carefully. Something was still not adding up right at all. "So…"

"Dean-" Sam said, and looked pained. "I really don't think I should…answer questions."

"I just want to know where I was when you were getting fucking _knifed,_" Dean said, a little impatiently, maybe, but he thought he had a right to that, except there Sam went again, fucking flinching, so he cut off, and tried not to grind his teeth too loudly.

"It's not your fault," Sam said, after a second. "And it's not…" Dean could just see Sam changing his mind about saying 'that bad' at the last minute, and _good, _because if that was _not bad-_

"Are you hunting?" He asked, instead, feeling a peculiar lurch that was simultaneous hope and dread, because why…but then again, hadn't they always said you couldn't get away from hunting?

Sam swallowed, and then said, "No." Dean narrowed his eyes.

"Okay," he said. "Then what are you – no, let me guess. You can't tell me. Fuck!" He paced away from the bed and tried, once again, not to grit his teeth. Too hard. "Can't you…"

"Dean," Sam said, and it should have sounded whiny or anything but what it did, which was _dead tired. "_Just leave it alone. I don't even know why I'm here."

"Have some Gatorade," Dean said, belligerently, because he couldn't think of anything else to say and it pissed him off. Sam seemed amused, damn him. Seven foot tall Sam, so far from the gangly teenager slouching away from home. In so many goddamn ways, and what had gone wrong? (Maybe he should be keeping a closer eye on Sam at school.)

"Thanks," Sam said, and his eyes went all squishy in that way of his. "For…looking after me. This probably isn't exactly what you were expecting tonight."

"Yeah," Dean said. "No kidding." His stomach kept twisting uneasily. "But you know how it works."

"Yeah," Sam said, quietly, and there was that expression again, wistful-sad-longing. "The way it works." He was quiet, for a couple seconds. "Thanks," he said, again.

"You're repeating yourself," Dean said, just a little worried, and Sam turned his head and looked at Dean and his eyes were fuck, moist, like he was about to start _crying _ or something.

"It's not that I didn't want to talk to you," Sam said, "It's just that I was scared you wouldn't pick up." Dean felt a pang, and he wasn't sure if Sam was talking to him or to some other Dean, the one from the future (who'd let Sam get knifed, seriously, what was he _thinking_).

"Sam," said Dean, seriously, because it seemed like this was important. "I'll always pick up."

"Yeah," said Sam, and he sounded so goddamn sad, "That's what I thought, too." His eyes slid closed again. He looked like he was barely breathing, and Dean felt his heart thud a little too fast for a couple seconds. Stupid Sam, turning him into a fucking girl.

He was just sleeping, though, this time. Blood loss wore you out.

He meant to stay awake, as long as he had to, until Sam woke up again, but he was crashing and Dean leaned his head back with a sigh, promising himself to just nap for a little while.

~.~

When he opened his eyes, Sam was gone. The bed was rumpled, all the blood was still there, but Sam had vanished, and checking the salt line, Dean felt his shoulders fall. So he'd gone back. Or, well, forward. Back to whatever was going on there, whatever he was doing, whoever had stuck a knife in him.

He hoped that wherever he was in that time, he remembered where he was supposed to be.

Dad was going to be pissed when he got back to this motel room.

Dean sighed. Then he reached over to the table and picked up his phone, scrolled down to Sam's number.

_I was scared you wouldn't pick up. _

His finger hovered over the 'call' button.


End file.
